Mass Effect 3: One of the Best Endings in Gaming (SPOILERS)

When I completed my first playthrough of Mass Effect 3, I had nothing but unpleasant things to say regarding both the ending and the competency of BioWare's writing staff. In one of my MyIGN status updates, I even said, "Mass Effect 3's ending feels like the last few paragraphs of a creative writing assignment already three days overdue." Clearly these were harsh words implying even harsher criticisms, and indeed I was sincere in typing those sentiments. I honestly thought, along with most fans, that the ending of this trilogy did little justice to the greatness that preceded it. This was, however, after having only witnessed one of the endings. By this point, I'm sure most of you know about ME3's ending system, with tiers of endings granting varying degrees of choice and success in these choices to Commander Shepherd based on one's Effective Military Readiness rating. That said, when I refer to the various ending possibilities, I believe there are only six true possibilities: three for those who saved the Collector base from ME2, and three for those who destroyed it. Anything below the 5,000 mark in EMR is negligible as far as I'm concerned. Additionally, the options which fall under the "saved the Collector base" path are all circumscribed by the "destroyed the Collector base" path, at least in terms of their overall outcome. Because of that, I will only be acknowledging three endings in this game, as the others are either only obtained by negligence or are included within these three primary endings. For those who are unfamiliar with ME3's ending system, IGN posted a handy little guide for them this past week (note that these accounts of the game's "16" endings are all rife with spoilers, so read at your own risk).

SPOILER WARNING FROM HERE ON OUT.

The endings I acknowledge as being the three "true" endings are control, synthesis, and destroy in the 5,000 EMR tier. Each of them have the exact same events leading up to their execution; Shepherd takes out the reaper allowing for Alliance troops to make the final assault towards the collection beam of the Crucible. It is imperative that the Alliance get ground troops within the Crucible as the device is apparently only operational from inside. Of course, because this is Shepherd's story, she joins in this final push towards the beam. However, her transport is put out of commission by either rubble or munitions, and so she and the rest of these elite Alliance squads make a mad-dash towards the beam on foot. The sprint is a near complete annihilation of the Alliance forces by way of a secondary reaper's laser, even prompting radio chatter to conclude that no one survived the assault. Which is odd, because there stands Shepherd, the lone survivor. She may be worse for wear, but she is clearly not dead; accordingly, she finishes the push towards the beam, ascends into the Crucible, reunites with Anderson, confronts the Illusive Man, and meets the Catalyst, who tells Shepherd about the true intent and nature of the Reapers, how they are a source of order in the face of chaos perpetuated by the rebellion of synthetics against their organic creators, and how they are truly a benevolent force in the galaxy, eradicating only those civilizations who reached a particular level of technological advancement or prowess.

After these explanations, the Catalyst then presents to Shepherd the infamous ultimatum between control, synthesis, and destruction. She can choose to control the Reapers, which effectively consolidates her into the reaper framework, destroying her physical self in a fate comparable to death. She can choose to synthesize organic and the synthetic lifeforms, the Reapers included, because according to the Catalyst, that is the "final form of evolution," and a solution to the cycle of "order and chaos." Finally, she can chose to fulfill her mission and wipe out the entire reaper population, though the Catalyst informs her that this action would also lead to the death of every other synthetic lifeform in the galaxy including EDI and the Geth. Decisions, decisions.

During my first playthrough, I chose to synthesize. Given that the Illusive Man and his ideals of controlling the Reapers were insane and spectacularly evil, as a predominantly Paragon Shepherd, I found it hard to all the sudden sympathize with that mindset now, even if it theoretically reduced the number of casualties and was highlighted in blue, the universal color for Paragon choices in the series thus far. Destroy, highlighted in red, the color of Renegade options throughout all three games, seemed to have too high a cost to others, even if it was what I had been fighting for all along, to be the morally justifiable thing to do. Which left me with the synthesis option, the only choice of the three that had no particular alignement whatsoever, and seemed to be the only reasonable selection given the ramifications of the other two. As I watched the final cutscenes play out, I had many of the same questions as the rest of the internet seemed to have: when did this whole synthetics versus organics business start outside the Geth-Quarian war? Why was the Normandy using a mass relay at the time of the beam's activation? Wasn't the entire crew back on Earth only minutes ago? Where are they going? What is the significance of their crash-landing on the virgin planet, untouched by modern civilization? Why is Buzz Aldrin regaling Shepherd's legacy to some kid? Was the entire series supposed to be interpreted as this old man telling the tale of Commander Shepherd? Why is this so damn confusing?

After venting my frustrations with a friend who had completed the game just one day prior, I decided to investigate the other two endings in an effort to confirm my suspicions that BioWare had completely botched the ending to one of the best video game franchises of all time. Scrolling through the bowels of the internet, I found bits and blurbs about Shepherd surviving one of her endings. After further inspection, and a little help from IGN's own ending guide, the consensus seemed to be that destroying the Reapers was the only way to ensure Shepherd's survival. This only raised further questions in my mind, however, as it seemed to be clearly implied by the Catalyst that Shepherd, being part synthetic, would die if she were to destroy the Reapers. I had to see this for myself. So I booted up my last autosave, beamed up to the Crucible, and destroyed the Reapers by initiating an explosion within the Crucible, thus consuming Shepherd in flames. The rest of the cutscenes played out fairly similarly, only now Joker was joined by Specialist Traynor and Garrus on the planet the Normandy crash-landed on with no EDI in sight. While that was a bit disheartening, I was glad to see my party members survive the assault on the Crucible, the one the radio claimed had no survivors. Not only that, I was excited to see the triumphant Commander walking off into the sunset having both cheated death and brought peace to the galaxy. That, as I'm sure many of you know by now, is not what I got. What I got, my friends, was oh so much better. What I got was this.

Now, you may be wondering to yourself: why is this preferable to a more triumphant return of Shepherd? Doesn't this secret ending only give rise to more questions, like why the Normandy would simply abandon Shepherd even after the Reaper threat was taken care of, or why the debris looks more like building rubble than anything, or how Shepherd could have survived the annihilation of all synthetic life if she was indeed part synthetic? Yes, yes it does, which is precisely why it works. Any ending without this last 20 seconds gives rise to questions, sure, but they're questions which could be answered by citing poor planning or implementation in the writing process. Why is the Frankenstein-esque mantra against the dangers of creating artificial life suddenly a major theme in the last five minutes of a thirty-hour game? Because either the writers don't know how to develop theme throughout a narrative, static or otherwise, or they simply rushed the ending, falling back on a familiar trope to carry the philosophical weight of the trilogy in its last leg. Why was the Normandy fleeing the Sol system? That's an example of deus ex machina to maroon them on the planet in order to further drive this half-assed point about the dangers of technology home. Why did these endings have so little to do with all the choices Shepherd had made throughout the series? Because either they didn't wish to alienate those who hadn't already played Mass Effect 1 and 2, something BioWare clearly payed attention to in this game for better or worse, or the ending was rushed. The answers to these questions all can be attributed to the writers themselves and their competency. However, the questions brought to mind by the secret ending and its relationship with the final 10 minutes of the game are far more complex than those without it, and the answers to these questions I don't think can be attributed to the poor performance of BioWare's writing staff. If anything, they speak to a particular sophistication held by this staff in their handling of interactive narrative and their willingness to push boundaries, with one boundary in particular being unquestionably pushed in Mass Effect 3, namely the notion of unreliable narration. How does ME3 implement unreliable narration? By the attempted indoctrination of Commander Shepherd.

If you haven't familiarized yourself yet with the theory, there are plenty of videos, articles, and thread discussions regarding the indoctrination of Shepherd as an explanation for these three endings. The video that had the largest impact on my perception of the endings thus far would have to be this one posited by TheGOODKyle. If you have a few minutes, check it out; I think he provides many of the examples and points used to support the indoctrination theory, though I feel he gives a bit too much credence to the notion that Shepherd is outside of an oxygen field while speaking with the Catalyst. It seems to make sense, but in a universe whose susceptibility to having its fantastical or impossible elements explained away through pseudoscience is already well-established, it simply isn't damning enough to be a reliable counterexample. Regardless, he does bring up some of the strongest examples for the theory in the video, particularly how BioWare handles the child, the state of Shepherd and her surroundings in the secret "survival" ending, and the overall sense of inconsistency and "wrongness" during the assault towards the Crucible and the interactions which take place within it.

The child was really the tipping point for me in terms of my descent into conspiracy theoreticism. The extent to which signs point to the child not having existed is simply too great to ignore. Could he simply be an analogy for all the innocent lives Shepherd fails to save? Sure. If the indoctrination theory is false, that is clearly the case. However, there are aspects of Shepherd's interaction with the child that are without question odd. For instance, the roar of the reaper just as Shepherd pulls away from the child to address Anderson is oddly reminiscent of the description of a failed indoctrination attempt found in a particular Mass Effect novel, all of which are canon. Not only that, it was the sound of the child crawling through the ducts that caught Shepherd's attention; there were absolutely no audio cues to suggest that the child had turned himself around and scurried off in the few seconds between their conversation and Anderson's interruption. TheGOODKyle fails to mention this in his video, but the actual conversation with the child is strange beyond belief. What child on earth would decline the aid of an adult in a time of crisis? What child would be so jaded and pessimistic so as to think that all is lost? That isn't a mindset humans as a species develop until later in life. At such an early stage, children are largely concerned with their own personal safety so as to protect their genes at least until adulthood, and while children are also largely distrusting of strangers and those they feel are foreign to their family unit, in such a state of panic, is it believable in the slightest that this child would decline Shepherd's assistance, especially with such a defeatist resolve? I think not, and I would hope that BioWare also thinks not. I do understand that the unnaturalness of this interaction could be attributed to poor writing on BioWare's behalf, but I think enough evidence exists to support the contrary.

Like the dream sequences found throughout the game. Under the first interpretation of the child as a symbol more than anything, these dreams are fairly straightforward; Shepherd is attempting to help the child, who represents innocent life, but consistently fails to do so. Shepherd having these dreams on her own accord is all well and good, I suppose, but consider the description of indoctrination according to the codex as can be found here. Now consider this passage in particular: "as time passes, they have feelings of 'being watched' and hallucinations of 'ghostly' presences. Ultimately, the Reaper gains the ability to use the victim's body to amplify its signals, manifesting as 'alien' voices in the mind." Adding to this that in accordance with the extended Mass Effect universe, which again, is all canon, indoctrination is not only permanent (i.e. its effects persist even outside of any Reaper's vicinity), it also isn't exclusive to any Reaper in particular. Literally any Reaper, whether it be Sovereign, Harbinger, whoever, can initiate the indoctrination process. Now, here is the second dream sequence. Note the ghostly presences, note the alien voices in Shepherd's mind. The dream sequences embody the description of indoctrination to a T. Not only that, they progress in a fashion indicative of various stages in the indoctrination process. Begin with the first sequence and watch the other two subsequently. Note the lack of voices or figures in the first sequence but their presence in the second and their growing prevalence in the third; this is exactly how the process of indoctrination is described in the series' own codex system. The Reapers are attempting to dissuade Shepherd from pursuing her mission and destroying them by constantly feeding her these images and voices which continually stress the impossibility of the task. Shepherd has never been one to have such self-doubt, yet even if she possibly was, isn't that something BioWare would allow the player to define? In a game all about social interaction and establishing a personal identity (or at least a personality by way of the Paragon and Renegade system), I feel as though the confidence of Commander Shepherd in her abilities would, if they were at all in question, be determined by each individual player. But maybe this is enough to convince some of you that Shepherd is being indoctrinated. If so, great! If not, let's look for further examples to support the theory, shall we?

The second damning piece of evidence, at least for me, is the actual locale of Shepherd's awakening. TheGOODKyle says basically all that needs to be said about this facet, and his conclusions are echoed in a number of different outlets throughout the internet, so I won't belabor this point too much. Basically, the nature of the rubble Shepherd awakens in clearly speaks to it having previously been brick-and-mortar Earth architecture. Had it been the Crucible's wreckage. there would have been much more metallic objects and textures. There is the possibility that Shepherd survived the crash-landing of the Crucible's command center as it plummeted towards earth, but that is unlikely for a number of reasons. People often say it's due to the wreckage breaking up within the Earth's atmosphere, but that reasoning can't can't combat a "made with mysterious materials" pseudo-science explanation as to the possibility of Shepherd's survival as it's a work of fiction. I do think, however, that the sheer impact of such a collision would be impossible for anyone to survive, and no amount of pseudo-science can explain that away without getting to the point of, "oh, she created a stasis field just before impact"-caliber explanations. Some people have postulated that Shepherd could have been beamed back down to earth after activating the Crucible, but why would a Reaper construction have such a failsafe to protect organic lifeforms? Not only that, why would Shepherd be beamed back down under a pile of rubble? All in all, I think it is fairly clear that Shepherd is on earth during the secret ending, and the only point of contention is simply how she got there. I feel as though there are no satisfying explanations for how Shepherd would escape the Crucible, and therefore I can only assume that she never left the planet; everything taking place on the Crucible was either a dream, a hallucination, or indoctrination. There is no evidence to suggest that Shepherd was asleep, the entire scenario seemed far too vivid to be an hallucination, and so I must assume that it was the final attempt to indoctrinate Shepherd. Additionally, what happens right before and whilst on the Crucible also seems to greatly support this claim.

Let's start from the beginning of this final segment. To me, this begins at the top of the hill running down towards the beam. If you look to your upper right, you can see Harbinger disintegrating Shepherd's Alliance comrades with relative ease. Then, Shepherd herself is just about to get zapped when all of a sudden, the screen fades to white. Moments later, Shepherd picks herself up out of the rubble and begins to trudge towards the Crucible's beam. Now that scenario alone is absolutely bizarre for a number of reasons. First, how is it possible for you to survive a beam that would kill you in one hit back on Rannoch? Second, if you did survive such an attack, why would the radio chatter claim that there were no survivors in the assault? Third, why wouldn't Harbinger simply finish you off? With Shepherd moving so slowly and there purportedly being three husks and a marauder between you and the Crucible beam, four creatures who could have communicated to Harbinger that Shepherd was still alive, you would think that it would be in the Reapers' best interest to eliminate clearly their greatest threat. And fourthly, assuming the ending is all Harbinger's attempt to indoctrinate Shepherd, if he failed and Shepherd awoke, as is implied by the secret ending, wouldn't he simply vaporize her immediately upon her success, considering he already had his laser trained on her? Unless this last example was simply an inconsistency overlooked by BioWare, I feel as though the indoctrination process would have to begin sometime before then, sometime when Shepherd would somehow be covered by rubble. When that would be, I'm not sure, but I think that is but a minor imperfection in this theory.

Moving on to the events which happened within the Crucible itself, the radio chatter claimed that there were no survivors in the assault. If that were the case, Anderson simply could not be up there for any reason whatsoever. It may be believable for the radio operators to miss one person reaching the beam, but to miss two stretches the limits of imagination regarding the competency of these trained military personel; in an operation of such importance, no one assigned to report on its status would simply fail to do so with that degree of inaccuracy. The Illusive Man's presence is at least justified, if a tad convenient. That isn't to say convenience entails falsehood in narrative, however, as clearly more convenient things have been engineered earlier in the series that are unquestionably canon.

To continue any further, we must allow ourselves to assume for the sake of the argument that Anderson somehow made it through the beam and up into the Crucible. With that assumption, the following conversation between Shepherd, Anderson, and the Illusive Man plays out in a fairly straight-forward fashion. The Illusive Man is clearly indoctrinated, something foreshadowed throughout the entire game and is entirely believable, and Shepherd finally convinces him to abandon his pursuit of dominion over the Reapers. Afterwards, he kills himself in a manner reminiscent of Saren back in Mass Effect 1, and Shepherd has one final heart-to-heart with Anderson before Anderson himself bleeds out from the gunshot wound. Shepherd reaches the console to initiate the weapon but fails to figure out how before collapsing to the floor. Quite possibly all of this, granting Anderson's presence on the Crucible at all, is plausible. I honestly have no qualms with this portion of the ending, nor do I feel it has any evidence to support the indoctrination theory. This is why some people have made the claim that the indoctrination process actually began once Shepherd collapses in front of the console, because what happens next is all kinds of suspicious.

Shepherd is brought up on this floating platform to an unknown portion of the Crucible where she meets the Catalyst, an entity with the physical form of the boy back on Earth existing within the Citadel who is responsible for the creation of the Reapers and their modus operandi of purging the galaxy of sufficiently intelligent life. After explaining as much, the Catalyst gives Shepherd the infamous 3-pronged ultimatum which I have already discussed in length previously. Now remember what I said previously about the nature of these three choices and how they were presented to the player. Control, the goal of the Illusive Man throughout the game, a short-sighted and selfish endeavor, was highlighted in blue, the color of Paragon choices in the Mass Effect series. Destroy, the morally justifiable goal of every form of life in the galaxy being slowly wiped out by the Reapers, is highlighted in red, the color of Renegade choices. Synthesis, the wild card option that saves any and all forms of life in the galaxy without repercussion, is simply a white shaft of light, white being the color of neutral choices. Now, if BioWare was sincerely presenting these options to the player without any sort of trickery or dubiousness, why would these options be highlighted as they are?

Renegade choices in the Mass Effect trilogy have always been about furthering Shepherd's own self-interest. It doesn't always correlate with a negative moral alignement, but it does typically correlate with off-the-cuff, selfish, or risky behavior. In all three scenarios, the Catalyst implies that Shepherd will die. Accordingly, it seems as though we cannot use self-interest as a motivating factor here. However, we can use the fact that the entire game leading up to the ending framed the Illusive Man's goal of controlling the Reapers as being unnecessarily risky and shortsighted, an action that would most likely be labeled a Renegade choice by the series' dialogue wheel. Paragon actions have always been associated with selflessness and altruism, making compromises and supporting diplomacy. If any of these final decisions were to be a Paragon option, it would be synthesis, the only option that includes some sort of diplomacy and unification, two tenants inherent in most Paragon decisions in the series. This leaves the destroy option as the only candidate for being truly neutral, and this seems to also make the most sense; destroying the reapers guarantees the survival of all organic life in the galaxy as they are without the risks associated with attempting to control the Reapers. If the Geth and al VIs are destroyed in the process, so be it; sometimes one must sacrifice the lives of others instead of one's own to do what must be done. Given that Shepherd is supposedly going to die in any of the three scenarios, this option doesn't seem to imply any sort of self-sacrifice, nor does it imply selfishness; it's truly a neutral option, and is perhaps the most sensible to choose given the far-reaching repercussions of the other two should anything go awry. This is why, despite the game labeling them otherwise, I picked the synthesis option during my first, Paragon-centric playthrough; it was the option that seemed to make the most sense as being the paragon choice. Why would BioWare not present these options accordingly, how it seems they should have been presented?

The answer is because they are using unreliable narration in a video game. The sensory data the game provides the player, through the eyes and ears of Commander Shepherd, isn't "factual" sensory data. While the game clearly takes place from a third-person perspective, we as the player perceive the world around Shepherd as she perceives it, not as it is. Take the dream sequences for example, or the Tron-style data world on Rannoch; if we were only privy to experiencing the world from an entirely removed third-person perspective, we would only see Shepherd sleeping in her bed, or resting in a pod as her consciousness navigates fields of data. In this sense, our account of the world around Shepherd is more a akin to a first-person perspective than a third, even if we can see the Commander throughout the experience. Now, considering this player-Shepherd relationship, should Shepherd start to experience hallucinations, that false sensory data would be shared between her and the player, as manifested on the screen. These hallucinations clearly don't exist in the extended world outside of Shepherd's mind, but she and the player perceive them as if they do. This at least grants us the possibility for what Shepherd experiences whilst on top of the Crucible (or at any point during her stay inside the construction) to be false sensory data, data that is either misconstrued or is fabricated mentally, the latter often being referred to as hallucination. However, most hallucinations are entirely nonsensical in terms of their content, imagery, and intent; the ending moments of Mass Effect 3, on the other hand, are far more sensical than any sort of hallucination. Or at least they are sensical when self-contained. In the context of the game's established timeline up to that point, most of what the Catalyst speaks to Shepherd about is non sequitur, and throughout her exchange with the boy, Shepherd is very, for lack of a better phrase, unlike herself. She asks no questions, and she accepts all this newfound information at face-value, the acceptance of the legitimacy of the Illusive Man's ploy to control the Reapers being particularly suspicious. This all implies, at least to me and a growing number of people around the internet, that at least this final exchange and the subsequent cutscenes are all part of Harbinger's attempt to indoctrinate Shepherd.

Think about it; it would explain practically everything about the ending. Not only that, there is ample evidence to be found throughout the game, not just in the ending, to support this claim, some of which I have already shared. But doesn't it make sense? Of course the Reapers would label the control and synthesis options as being Paragon and neutral; those are the only two options which would allow them to live, the only two choices they want Shepherd to make should she eventually reach the command console inside the Crucible. Clearly neither outcome would actually come to fruition, and the Reapers would simply press on in their eradication of all intelligent organic life in the galaxy. There is no way to actually control them or to bond with them, only ways to dupe Shepherd into believing there is, only ways to dupe the player into believing there is. By selecting either of these options, effectively the player, on Shepherd's behalf, is succumbing to indoctrination. The player has fallen right into the Reaper's trap, and would attempt to extend the proverbial olive branch towards the Reapers, an olive branch that would subsequently be erased from the universe via laser. Effectively, when Shepherd "dies" in these two scenarios, it isn't a physical death, but rather a mental death; her resolve, and by extension the player's resolve, to stop the Reapers at any cost has effectively been eliminated by this hallucinogenic episode crafted by the Reapers for indoctrination purposes. And since Shepherd has been experiencing the effects of indoctrination over the course of Mass Effect 3, as evidenced by the dream sequences, her susceptibility to more rigorous mental invasion is severely heightened by the end of the game, and fabricating an entire fully-realized hallucination is not out of the question.

Additionally, the destruction option being labeled as the negative, selfish choice would actually make sense in this context given that the Reapers obviously don't want Shepherd destroying them once given the chance. By selecting destruction, Shepherd is effectively breaking the hold Harbinger was attempting to have on her. This is why Shepherd regains consciousness on Earth: she never left. The crucible she was subjected to inside the Crucible was all fabricated in an attempt to indoctrinate her. This is why the destroy option is the only option which allows Shepherd to "survive," as it's the only option that breaks Harbinger's indoctrination attempt. And yes, breaking free from the effects of indoctrination is indeed possible in Mass Effect canon, though it requires intense mental fortitude to do so. This mental fortitude, in my mind, comes in the form of Effective Military Readiness. Not that obtaining military assets correlates to mental fortitude in and of itself, but it does imply a certain degree of commitment to a particular goal or ideal. Notice in the ending guide that Shepherd only "survives" with an Effective Military Readiness rating of 4,000 or higher, with the 5,000 tier giving her an additional, albeit red-herring choice. Why would this matter in regards to Shepherd's own survival? Sure, it could otherwise correlate with the fate of Earth, and in some endings, it does. But such a figure has no immediate impact on Shepherd's survival after she initiates the Reaper's destruction. While the EMR correlation is admittedly a little bit of a stretch, every other example I have brought forward, I feel, is enough to at least plant the seed of doubt in anyone's mind who has played Mass Effect 3 and can acknowledge the issues I raised with it and its ending. I simply hope that this, in conjunction with every other pro-indoctrination-theory article, blog, or video on the internet, can convince you that this is Mass Effect 3's true tentative ending. Obviously BioWare would be prepping the true ending as either the first purely post-production bit of DLC or the last, culminating the series on a high note, should the indoctrination theory be correct. And while that may seem to some like a way of milking money out of your audience, I personally will be ecstatic when that DLC is finally released, and I will gladly give BioWare ten of my dollars. Why? Partly to see how the trilogy all ends outside the confines on Shepherd's mind, but mostly to show BioWare as much monetary love as possible for successfully implementing unreliable narration in a video game. Come on, people, that's pretty damn impressive.